Immigration reform the only answer to border crisis

Look at the face of the toddler, full of innocence. Step back and look into the faces of the hundreds of children surrounding him, passing the hours lying on mats, separated by chain link and razor wire. Glance at the boy, wearing a tattered cowboy hat, heaving a basketball toward a crooked rim in his few minutes of daily exercise.

Look into these faces from Central America and tell them that you would summarily dump them in Mexico, ignoring the American principles of due process.

When you volunteer to lift that boy into your arms, carry him over the bridge and leave him in a nation less prepared than ours to deal with a surge of young people desperate for a better life, when you can put yourself in those shoes, then we might listen to you.

Until then, stop misrepresenting what is happening in Nogales, Ariz. It is a humanitarian crisis, and this nation’s first instinct should be to comfort the children.

But it is election season, and politicians cannot help themselves. It is easy to demagogue hundreds of youths bused from southern Texas to Nogales, especially if all you see is a horde of aliens, not the faces of individual children.

It is easy to pound the fist and draw the wrong conclusions: That this proves the border is porous. That giving “dreamers” safe harbor encouraged this exodus. That immigration reform is a bad idea.

All wrong, but that last one is dangerously wrong. We are dealing with this humanitarian crisis now because House Republicans refuse to fix a broken immigration system. It has been a year since the Senate passed a compromise brokered in part by Arizona’s senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake.

But from the House, nothing. The most vocal voices, such as Iowa’s Rep. Steve King, would rather stir fears than act in this nation’s best interests. They will keep crying “secure the border” because it sells, even though the border has never been more secure. ...

No, the best way to secure the border is to create an immigration system that balances this nation’s labor needs, eliminates the Hobson’s choice of waiting 20 years for a visa or sneaking across the border, and brings 12 million people out of the shadows. It would include strict safeguards for access to employment, which is where the wall should be built. ...

— Arizona Republic, Phoenix, June 22

Sound and fury in wake of shooting obscure key points

It was expected — but still unseemly — that the horrific shooting last week at Reynolds High School in Troutdale almost immediately sparked a new wave of political posturing about gun control.

The sound and fury obscured a few points worth keeping in mind:

First, the kind of gun control measures that have been fought over during the last few years in the Oregon Legislature wouldn’t have done anything to stop the shooter, 15-year-old Jared Michael Padgett, from accessing the weapons he brought to the school. ...

Recent legislative sessions have included bills calling for stricter criminal background checks for gun purchasers, but those haven’t gained any headway. And they wouldn’t have made any difference last Tuesday in Troutdale.

What did make a difference was a well-trained and courageous teacher, Todd Rispler, who heard the shooting, spotted Padgett and then raced to the school’s office to initiate lockdown procedures. ...

What also made a difference Tuesday was the presence of a pair of well-trained school resource police officers (and other officers as well, who were on the scene quickly), who confronted and followed Padgett into a restroom, where the student died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. ...